Principal’s Book of the Month a hit at West Street

by Susan Mikula Campbell
Niagara Wheatfield Tribune, September 27, 2007

Principal Theron Mong, right, reads to students.

The tiny girl dressed all in pink waves to the principal as her class crosses the lobby of West Street School.

When he smiles and waves back, she stops suddenly to hold up her obviously new pink backpack, causing a train-wreck in the tail end of the snake line of pupils as the three boys behind her look away to wave, too.

Principal Theron Mong, at 6 foot, 5 inches tall, might seem like a giant to some of his students, but it’s obvious they regard him as a friendly giant. After all, he reads them stories.

Mong introduced his Principal’s Book of the Month this week at West Street.

Grouped by age, the youngsters sit on the floor in the lobby while Mong and his shorter Assistant Principal Tim Carter take turns reading the pages of, appropriately, “How to Make Friends with a Giant” by Gennifer Choldenko.

“I like it when people read stories to me, because then I can think about what they read,” said third-grader Danielle Thaler, confessing that while Mong is tall, he’s “very nice.”

The Principal’s Book of the Month gives the West Street principal and assistant principal an opportunity to teach groups of students about character traits such as friendship, responsibility, cooperation, respect, compassion, self-control, honesty, acceptance and success. They design lessons around the books that incorporate strategies the teachers are using in the classroom. This month’s character trait is friendship, and to emphasize that point, a tall figure of a giraffe stands in the lobby with the word friendship on a sign around its neck.

Before Mong and Carter start reading, they introduce a large poster of Brainy Brad. He comes from a book called “Reading Power,” a teacher resource that has lessons that teach students to be strategic readers. They talk about how the students can make connections to their own lives from what they read.

In the story they read, other second graders make fun of the new boy because he is so tall, but his short classmate, Jake, helps him fit in.

That was a connection for third-grader Brandt Breezee.

“When I was younger in kindergarten, that’s what happened to me. I had two best friends. They didn’t care if I was tall; they just wanted to be friends,” he said.

Mong said sometimes students have the idea that a principal is someone you go to when you’re bad. That does happen, but now if someone is sent to him or Carter for fighting, they can bring up the reading lesson about friendship … and make a connection.

The idea for the Principal’s Book of the Month came from a school he previously worked for in Rochester where the principal read a story over closed circuit television.

Mong likes the more personal aspect of the lobby, which gives him and Carter a chance to interact with the students. They sing a song about making connections and stop at several points in the story to ask questions or tell of personal experiences.

When he was in school, he always was put in the back of the class because the girls would complain they couldn’t see past his head, Mong told the youngsters. “You do feel different because you’re in the back of the class all the time.”

He gets giggles when he confesses that even as a grown up being tall can cause trouble, telling how some of the teachers have put foam on the bottom of their elevated televisions because he kept bumping his head.

Third-grader and West Street newcomer Matthew Vekich seems awed by the fact that the principal actually came and read him a story. That’s never happened to him before.

“It’s cool to have the principal read a book every month and have a theme about it,” he said.